It's not like they're picking on a real disease
Sunday, March 13, 2011 at 9:29PM
And I should not be offended because I'm not "that type" of crazy person. I mean, it's okay to make fun of lunatics in straight jackets who are locked up psychiatric wards because it's not like they are people like me, the not “as crazy”, crazy person.
I shouldn't be offended by their gyrations on the gym floor, clad in straight jackets with wild eyes and disheveled hair. Maybe I shouldn't be offended, but I am. In fact I'm twice as offended.
For the second time the public has witnessed a dance team's routine involving straight jackets and dance moves emulating stereotypical behaviors of a psychiatric ward patient. For the second time, those who advocate for mental illness should be expected to put on thicker skin and just know that they aren’t dancing about my friends and family, but just the Hollywood stereotype of a mad man. What these teams don’t realize is it’s ignorant and hurtful.
The Robert Morris University Dance Team (pictured above) is the latest example of this ignorance. The team recently won 2nd place in their division doing a "Psych Ward" routine.
Less than 300 miles and two months ago, the cheer team of Waunakee High School donned white straight jackets with "Psych Ward" written boldly on the back and danced to songs such as "I get crazy" and "Get out of your mind" one of which even started with maniacal laughter.
These types of stereotypes sting the mental health community. Advocates who fight adversity are met with an uphill battle that is only made only worse by events such as this. It demeans the real experience of those suffering with a mental illness and does nothing to break stereotypes.
It also suggests that mental illness is not a real illness. That it does not measure up to things such as diabetes, heart disease or other long-term illnesses. Mental illness can be a disability like cerebral palsy or Alzheimer’s, yet you would never see someone perform a cerebral palsy routine. That would be crass and the outcry would be enormous.
So why do people not see that those who take offense to routines such as these do not need to “just lighten up" (as NBC Sports' Rich Chandler stated in response to hearing about the outcry at Waunakee High)?
Why can’t people like Rich look at a set of straight jackets and think about people who have possibly worn them and consider the fact that this illness has victims just like any other, instead of putting the blame onto those who feel offended?
As a nation we should be aware of just how prevalent mental illness is. 1 in every 10 people will suffer from a mental illness. And what this statistic also illustrates is that, at least one girl on each of those dance teams suffers or will suffer from a mental illness.
I'd like to believe it's mostly people's obliviousness to others' struggles that makes them inadvertently discriminatory. However, I'm more inclined to think that there is an underlying second issue; that people still have a lot of fear around mental illnesses. They fear the unknown, fear the crazies that shown in the media as dangerous murderers and the fear that their family could be subjected to such a terrible thing too.
These beliefs will only propagate if we let dance routines like these go without notice, without a call to action, without letters to the coaches and principals. Turning a blind eye only serves as a breeding ground for hatred and misinformation.
Mental health patients should not be made light of and their struggles should not be conveyed in a demeaning fashion. This disease strips a person of so much dignity as it is, that it is a disservice to them as human beings to allow for any further assaults to be aimed in their direction.
I know these dance teams did not put together their routines to create a offensive experience for the mental health community. They did so because they did not have the insight to see the insensitivity or the understanding of what it is to suffer from a mental illness.
I am not here to assault them; I simply want to make an example of them. I want to remind people to stop and think about what their actions might mean to others before acting.
Because you never know who that 1 in 10 might be.
Waunakee High School sent an apology letter to a young blogger, Erika, who sent a very heartfelt letter to the coach about her struggles and how she felt discriminated against. They are now working with NAMI of Wisconsin to become more educated about mental illness.
The Robert Morris University Dance Team was sent a beautiful letter by Chrisa Hickey and has not had a response to this date.
Despite multiple requests for an apology Rick Chandler has not issued any sort of response for his insensitive remarks. I have recently contacted NBC Sports about Rick’s comments and have not heard back from them as of yet.
Reader Comments (3)
It saddens me to think that the person/people in charge of so many of these groups can't see that these routines would be offensive. Working in a high school and knowing some of my co-workers, I can see HOW it happens, but it doesn't excuse this sort of thing in any way.
I hope those of you who are AGAINST these "straight jacket" routines watched "Dancing with the Stars on Oct 31. They were doing the EXACT same thing. I hope ALL of you write in and complain to ABC TV about this. In doing so.. I hope you come to realize that YOU ARE THE CRAZY ONES!. Pollitical Correctness has gotten out of hand. If you can't see the creativity in a DANCE routine how could you ever possibly listen to any stand up comedian? How can you tolerate the jokes in any comedy movie? You think they were stereotyping....Guess what! stereotypes exist because they have some truth behind them. No one would EVER jump around, banging their head, and roll on the floor in a straight jacket if some one hadn't seen a person in a psych ward, in a straight jacket actually do it at some time. JUST SHUT THE F**K up grow some thicker skin.
First, I don't watch Dancing with the Stars, so no, I did not see the routine. I did try to find it on YouTube but could not, so I cannot comment on the routine.
Secondly, you are missing the point. Why would someone choose to do imitate a psych ward patient? Mental illness is a sad, horrible disease that is completely misunderstood by the general public--and will continue to be misunderstood as long as these stereotypes are perpetuated.
I have been in a psych ward twice. I have never "jump[ed] around, banging [my] head, and rolled on the floor in a straight jacket" and neither have the 100s of other mentally ill people I know.
That is not the majority. Like it or not.
This is not about the thickness of one's skin, or political correctness (if you knew me, or my blog you'd know I am FAR, FAR from PC).
As for stereotyping, we all do it from time to time. Does it mean that it's right and that it represents 100% or even 85% of a particular group? No.
It's one thing to generalize about Asians being bad drivers or blacks liking fat white chicks or chicken-- it's another to take a devastating medical disease that real people suffer and die from every day and replicate their suffering for amusement.
Last time I checked, most racial, gender, religious stereotypes, etc wouldn't keep a person from being too embarrassed to seek help the help they needed for a treatable disease and instead choose to end their own life.
And really, in the end, I'm not so sure what's so wrong in your eyes about wanting people to respect each other and not automatically jump to stereotypes to classify people.
Based on your comment, it would be easy for me to stereotype you as uneducated (simply by the lack of sophistication and proper grammar in your comment), but instead I'm going to assume that you were just so angered by my opinion that you chose not only to waste your time pointing out that I should not share MY opinions on MY blog but that you forgot the difference between a question mark and an exclamation point,that paragraphs are your friend and that the conclusion to a logical, SANE, debate should not end with something as un-intelligible as "Shut the fuck up."